We must not allow ourselves to be perplexed by any events and arguments adduced to prove that the sceptre _has departed_ from Judah; for the very same events and arguments would militate against the eternal dominion of his house which had been promised to David, and would therefore make us doubtful of that also. All these events and arguments lose their significancy, when we remark, that this departing is only an _apparent_, not a _definitive_ one;--that God never, by His promises, binds the hands of His punitive justice;--that His election goes always hand-in-hand with the visitation of the sins of the elected; but that, in the end, the election will stand in all its validity.[1] To Judah applies exactly what in Ps. lxxxix. 31-35 is said of David: "If his children forsake My law, and walk not in My judgments; if they break My statutes, and keep not My commandments; then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes. Nevertheless, My loving-kindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer My faithfulness to fail. My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of My lips." But the greater the degradation that had come upon Judah, the more consoling is this promise. If we see that neither the decline of David's and Judah's dominion after Solomon, nor the apparently total disappearance of David's kingdom which took place after the Chaldee catastrophe, and continued for centuries; nor the altogether comfortless condition (when [Pg 67] looking only at what Is visible) which Jeremiah describes in the words: "Judah is captive in affliction and great servitude: she dwelleth among the heathen, and findeth no rest. The anointed of the Lord, who was our consolation, is taken in their pits, he of whom we said, Under his shadow we shall live among the heathen. Slaves are ruling over us, and there is none to deliver us from their hand;"--if we see that all these things did not prevent the fulfilment of the words, "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah until Shiloh come;"--that, notwithstanding all these things, it most gloriously manifested itself in the appearance of Christ, that the dominion remained still with Judah;--why should we be dismayed though the river of the kingdom of God should sometimes lose itself in the sand? Why should we not be firmly confident that in due time it shall spring forth again with its clear and powerful waters?--But the _Jews_ are not benefited by this distinction betwixt the _definitive_ departing of the sceptre, and one which is merely _temporary_. The latter must necessarily be distinguished from the former by this:--that even in the times of abasement, there must be single symptoms which still indicate the continuance of the sceptre; and this was evidently the case in the times before Christ. In Jehoshaphat, Uzziah, and Hezekiah, the sceptre of Judah brought forth new leaves; after their return from the